Somewhere between the desert basins and craggy mountains of far west China, in the lonely expanse to which criminals and subversives have been exiled for generations, a human rights lawyer named Gao Zhisheng presumably sits in prison.

Meanwhile, 6,600 miles away, his wife peels a tangerine in the underground cafeteria of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill. She’s been wearing the same beige blouse for three days. The bunkerlike eatery echoes with lunchtime chatter. She understands little of it.

Across town, at the State Department about 12:30 Tuesday afternoon, the vice president of her home country is seated at lunch with the vice president of her adoptive country. Invitees sip a sparkling cuvee and dine on soy-marinated Alaskan butterfish.

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That afternoon, Xi would engage in a business roundtable with the chief executives of Coca-Cola and the Walt Disney Co., and Geng would cap her two-day sprint around the Hill by leaning into a microphone in front of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, her printed testimony shuddering in her nervous hands, getting ready to say what China doesn’t want to hear.